It looks genuine … next iPhone found in a bar?

After closing time, bars get to collect all the IDs, sunglasses and cell phones their drunken patrons accidentally left behind. It’s usually all unremarkable … unless one of those cell phones is a prototype of the next Apple iPhone.

Courtesy of Gizmodo

The next iPhone, if this is it, has a flat back and metallic edges, fitting better in with Apple’s Macintosh and iPad designs.Click to view more photos at Gizmodo

That seems to be what happened a week ago, and the phone wound up in the hands of Gizmodo. After spending a week with the mysterious device, Gizmodo has decided the device isn’t all that mysterious after all. It is, the gadget site believes, a genuine next-generation iPhone.

“We’re as skeptical – if not more – than all of you,” Gizmodo’s Jason Chen wrote. “We get false tips all the time. But after playing with it for about a week – the overall quality feels exactly like a finished final Apple phone – and disassembling this unit, there is so much evidence stacked in its favor, that there’s very little possibility that it’s a fake.

“In fact, the possibility is almost none. Imagine someone having to use Apple components to design a functioning phone, from scratch, and then disseminating it to people around the world. Pretty much impossible.”

What’s new? The next iPhone appears to have a new front-facing camera, a better rear camera with a flash, a higher-resolution LED screen, a secondary microphone – perhaps for noise cancellation – on top, metallic buttons, split volume buttons and a flat back panel instead of the curved back of previous iPhone models.

More information, photos and videos are on Gizmodo. Check it out here.